Grey Gardens
I gather from anecdotes that part of Grey Gardens’ power as a documentary is that the same person, on different viewings, can feel wildly different reactions to the Beales and their intertwined and literally messy lives. Yesterday I watched it for the first time, and one of my reactions was curiosity about Jerry Torre, the young handyman Little Edie called the Marble Faun. I googled him and it turns out he’s still alive, and a stone-carver. As a teenager he really did look like the statue from the Hawthorne novel.
